“The sun is going down. Its reddened light, filtered through the green foliage of a sultan’s parasol, flecks the ground in patches. High up on the trunk of a tree, cicadas are singing their hearts out. Tonight, perhaps, a little rain may fall.” Soseki Natsume, I am a Cat (1905-1906)

Is it because her name, as posted on social media, is so very long? Or exotic? Or strange-sounding?

Is it because the person who wrote that comment wrote in a language that wasn’t native to him?

Maybe he meant that after that day, after seeing that photograph, he would not ever forget the name of the woman posing with one foot in front, a navy cardigan over a dark dress that showed her knees, standing between two people he very likely knew the names of.

Memory is an evolving creature, it’s key characteristic is inaccuracy. William Maxwell, an admired author, wrote: “What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory–meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion–is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling.

“Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end.

“In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.” [So Long, See You Tomorrow, 1979]

I wasn’t good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy. — Alison Moyet

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness. — Ray Bradbury

If you’ve been on this earth as long as I have, you find that sometimes, these ad hoc groups come out and look for you. One doesn’t have to apply because thankfully, they’ve already offered you membership.

Why? In part because they have met you a long time ago and have come to know and accept you with all the quirks that come with the package. Others are themselves differentiated, and so know a kindred spirit when they see one.

To these differentiated ones, they don’t call it crazy, more like special.

Someone described me thus the other day. To find that definition still holds, after all this time (we’re talking decades here), well, that’s pretty special too.

September, when I was young, tended to be melancholic. Or should I say, I was melancholic whenever September came round. September at seventeen was rainy days and solitude in an empty house in a quiet neighbourhood that had since become more upscale than it ever was when I was living there. The rain soothed my spirits, these falling needles from the sky which I stared at from my bedroom in the Holland Road house for minutes that were hours long. The rain was a friend, the tears I could never cry.

Countless Septembers have since passed, at least three decades worth, and there have been autumnal Septembers in the American Midwest in all their fiery beauty, happy Septembers with friends in my family of believers, tranquil Septembers where I have been free of discontent; Septembers spent growing the children, a conflation of months and years being simply grateful.

Life can be surprising and unpredictable, something I never quite believed until recently. All it takes is a defining moment, something that clicks, like a key in an invisible lock, opening passageways that lead to the past and to the future all at the same time.

All it took were two packets of fried noodles bought from a hawker in Little India, and the irresistible impulse to eat the noodles, only minutes out of a hot wok, at a table on the roof of the clubhouse.

The roof of the clubhouse had a pool, big enough for four or five swimmers to swim up and down at the same time. No one was doing laps that Friday evening, perhaps the swimming lessons for children had wrapped up by half-past four. I unwrapped the brown paper packets and took out the white plastic forks that had come with them. The table was a bulky piece of terrazzo, its surface coarse under my fingertips and bleached with age. We brought the noodles, ketchup-red and curled, to our mouths, savouring the sour, spicy, sweet and tangy flavours on our tongues. A whisper of a breeze mingled with the talk; it was a different conversation, one that seemed unchanged.

What are you thinking?

One thing. Many. You know what they are; I never have to tell you.

When the moment is uncontrived, left to its own devices, there comes with it a revelation, an intimation of things we are not in the quest of. It occurred to me only after, that this was one of the most tranquil hours, with a residual simplicity precipitated from complexity, in a lifetime of love and friendship. Nothing’s changed. That the moment should arrive when it did, after some prior turbulence, made me suddenly calm again, and strangely, no longer as sad as I had been, that there was perhaps no room for regret, that loss was temporal, and there was much to gain, even into eternity. Such moments are rare, thus precious, and should never be forgotten.

On this little tropical island, there is a very old town house on Emerald Hill.

Built at the turn of the twentieth century, this old house has been lovingly restored, with handmade bricks on a wall in the inner courtyard where two koi swim in a pond under a skylight. I have never been inside these old houses on Emerald Hill in the heart of the city’s shopping district, though I have been to those converted into Italian restaurants or bistros. It’s not the same, is it?

Afternoon light pours in through the old glass windows into the main study.

But in the past week, I have had the good fortune to be spending whole days in this house on Emerald Hill–I’ve called it the House of Peace, for I’ve felt such a rare sense of calmness and tranquility–under its hundred-year-old rafters. It has been a particularly difficult week personally, but the house, the spirit of the place, has enveloped me in its old embrace, and my heart has managed to stay on an even keel through turbulent inner moments.

You will see me through this,

You will see me through this too.

Walking up this elegant and old staircase always thrills.

]]>https://featherglass.com/2014/09/19/emerald-hill-days/feed/1IMG_3415.JPGMingIMG_3411.JPGAfternoon light pours in through the old glass windows into the main study.Walking up this elegant and old staircase always thrills. Diaryhttps://featherglass.com/2014/01/09/diary/
https://featherglass.com/2014/01/09/diary/#respondWed, 08 Jan 2014 17:47:37 +0000http://featherglass.com/?p=8946Read More ›]]>Inspired by English playwright Alan Bennett’s Diary in the London Review of Books (9 Jan 2014), I decided to pull actual content from my 2013 pages of a journal.

30 January.The tragedy of the two young brothers who died when a cement mixer accidentally crushed them as they were riding a bike home from school hangs heavy over this tiny nation, as senseless as the shooting of the even younger 25 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.

When a very young person dies tragically, suddenly, even bystanders feel the loss, and strangely responsible.

I know these children are in a better place and are happy beyond the imagination. We grieve for the ones left behind.

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind

(Ode to Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth)

No. of kms run: 20.

14 February. A sty in my left eye. And seeing a bunch of people tomorrow. Staying off Facebook over the season of Lent (pre-Easter) the fourth year running. Insight #1: FB is loaded with details and micro-information about who ate what, soft news, human interest stories ( e.g.), life on Mars, other people’s children and their marvellous exploits (drum improvisations at age 4.) Staying away from this means I’m shedding the clutter my mind can’t help but pick up like a dustbuster everytime I trawl the newsfeeds. And I’m not *looking* for things to post to interest my readers. Face it, if without any reason the like button was disabled for one day, would you even post? Or would you wait for the like button to come on again? What does this say about you? And is FB a reciprocal medium? (You like my inane post on what I had for breakfast, I then like your similarly inane post of how you’re stuck in a traffic jam for 30 mins.) But if it were truly reciprocal, then why do people mostly post happy events and good news? Rarely are there bad-day posts, and for the most part, these are blithely ignored or briefly commisserated upon, and the cocktail party moves ahead, with or without you.

“Comin’?”

“Yup! See you there!”

“Kthanksbye!”

No. of km run: 0.

1 March. HongKong was fun, but it’s losing its charm.

Good thing the Soho district still retains the charm of 1980s HongKong. When our eyes meet, I hear a connective clang, and a match is struck.

Mostly due to the consumerist demands of the mainland Chinese. Big brands dominate where it was small old shops.

And then there was travel to Cebu in the Philippines.

A baby whale shark off the coast of Oslob, Cebu, in The Philippines.

No. of kms run: 6.5

28 May. Ryan’s 12th birthday. When my children were very young, I soon forgot — in the care and raising of them — that I was growing old. I used the strength in my arms to carry a baby until he was a toddler, I walked miles pushing a stroller, often laden with bags bulging with groceries, I got up early, I managed my time according to school schedules and school buses, and music, swimming and Chinese classes. And so my 30s flew by and while I was mindful of the 35-year-milestone, it paled in comparison to a child turning five, or six, or just one. Turning one is a big deal, to all who are not one.

No. of kms run: 17.5

30 June. Arrived back from the UK this afternoon. A long week of long days, 6am to 9 pm of daylight. Favourite moments were walking the streets of South Kensington, running in Hyde Park, admiring the Art Deco style inside Harrods, walking among ancient stone buildings in the old town of Cirencester in the Cotswolds, staying at the modestly-named Beechfield House (actually a manor).

A village in the Cotswolds called The Slaughters.

Driving the country lanes, walking the cobbled streets of Cirencester, the pretty river banks of The Slaughters, and cream tea (scones, clotted cream, and hot tea), admiring the Georgian architecture in SW London, breathing in the cold fresh air. (Singapore was choked up with haze and smoke from the forest fires of Indonesia then.)

No. of kms run: 35.3

28 July. The 30th reunion of girls from my alma mater. I was so late (from a previous appointment and a traffic jam in the rain) that most of the girls crowded around to say hi, and I was touched by their warmth, unexpected as it was. It’s a fact that people who’ve hung around each other in their adolescence find it effortless to return to that original state of youthful behavior, where an unguarded humour and sincere chatter abounds. But still the gap of years is felt, but not in an unkind way. With some people, the gap is never there, and it’s absence regarded as a profound blessing.

No. of kms run: 78.79. No. of injuries: 1 (heel).

13 August. Eighteen days before the half marathon. I’m re-learning how to run cadence [links to a relevant post on featherglass]. This is partly alarming, partly exciting. Not knowing how I’ll end up on September 1 now seems like a journey into unknown regions with my body, mainly my heart, lungs, and legs. An 18K run this Saturday.

No. of kms run: 116.8. No. of injuries: 3 (heel, knee, shin.)

30 September. Can’t believe I ran the half on the first day of September. It seems eons ago, a lifetime, yet I feel I’m still caught in the momentum of training although the pressure to go out and run is no longer there.

No. of kms run: 38.5. No. of injuries: 0.

25 October. The re-entry of a friend from The Hundred Acre Wood after 24 years of not speaking to each other. Undeniably happy.

No. of kms run: 41.31

6 November. A Sicilian lunch: White asparagus and poached egg drizzled with shavings of white truffle. Followed by rice pasta well-mixed with bone marrow and chopped octopus and followed by salt-baked sea bass infused with Italian herbs.

18 November. Time slowed down in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Four days felt like eight, but every hour seemed important because it was spent with people I’d met when I first visited this country 20 years ago. When you visit a place for the sake of its people, it changes forever the way you view the country. You could never quite play the tourist, even after a long absence.

No. of kms run: 27

15 December.

Khaolak, Southern Thailand. A good place to fly south for the winter.

How did I get from Lou Reed’s Perfect Day to John Coltrane’s In A Sentimental Mood? Sharing memories *is* a good way to spend time. There are some things Mastercard can’t buy.

No. of kms run: 17.7

My little Diary post is a far cry from Mr Bennett’s. In fact, it’s a little thin if one is looking out for events and milestones, but perhaps, all I wanted to do was to measure the passing of time. One thing I discovered is that as a traveller, time travels at different speeds depending on where you are.

. . . I’d love to hear what your year was like.

]]>https://featherglass.com/2014/01/09/diary/feed/0MingThe Soho district still retains the charm of 80s HongKong. A baby whale shark off the coast of Oslob, Cebu, in The Philippines. A village in the Cotswolds called The Slaughters. Khaolak, Southern Thailand. A good place to fly south for the winter. Repost: A Christmas Memoryhttps://featherglass.com/2013/12/05/repost-a-christmas-memory/
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Christmas used to come less with presents, more with baggage. Absent parents in my youth meant a silent house, no plans for turkey dinners, always relying on the kindness of aunts and uncles to remember to invite us to theirs own family affairs.

We would sit in their unfamiliar living rooms, work up smiles and polite conversation, outsiders warming ourselves by the hearths of happy cousins with their together parents until it was time to go home.

I would involve myself in youth group Christmas activities at church, and then take the bus home in the evening. The bus would take me through town, and, this time of year, it rained at night. Always. The streets would be brightly streaked with red and pink light, the malls incandescent. Christmastime was many evenings of me sitting alone in a crowded bus, looking through rain-splattered windows at the black streets shot through with rainbow lights cast from neon, going home to a shell of a home.

I’m glad that Christmases aren’t that way for me now: Twenty-six years of solitude at Christmas balanced against the recent nineteen happier ones with a family of my own. I am grateful that my children are ignorant how empty Christmases can feel, but sometimes the memories come back, just like the rain.

I love rainy nights. The things that did not kill you but made you strong always have a season, a climate, a weather to go with it. I take the weather with me everywhere I go.

Events this Christmas–the entire December in fact–have been extra-special, compared to previous ones. I’ve spent time with old friends who matter more than I care to admit, was part of an exhilarating morning run on a slushy forest trail, gained a new friend who found my parenting advice actually useful, and have been given a Christmas present I asked for partly in jest, not really thinking I would get it. (Who has the gall to ask for specific gifts when one can get things for oneself?)

This season of wonderment will stretch beyond Christmas 2012. It’s a heady mix of seeing old friends after many years of not speaking to each other, taking things easy with the children who grapple with a fast-paced academic life, good food, and cool evenings in the tropics.

There’s an awareness that these good things come from the One who created Christmas for us, who has bestowed on me the enduring love of a man, my children, good friends, fine health, and a life where memories can somehow look more beautiful with age.

A thousand memories.

This is a repost of something I’d written a year ago, and which I felt good enough to resurrect for the mood it conveys at this time of year. Leave a comment if Christmas is a blend of dark and light for you.

Followers of Winnie-the-Pooh would know the Hundred Acre Wood is the forest which Owl and Rabbit (Tigger, Kanga and Roo, Piglet and Eeyore) inhabit, and where the boy Christopher Robin often came to visit.

The McSweeney piece by Rachel Klein describes how Pooh and friends gather for a Very Emportent Meeting to discuss what to do about Christopher Robin popping up on Facebook requesting to be their friend after years of silence (he’d grown up and gone away to college and more).

I won’t spoil it by describing what happens further in the McSweeney piece, except that when the link appeared on my Facebook feed, many left comments to say that they did not like how it ended, nor how dear Christopher Robin was portrayed. Plus, I think the portrayal of Mr Robin is very American — the lifestyle hinted at after college — and I like to think Chris, who is British-born, might have done things a lot differently and say, ended up in Asia and adopted a more globalised perspective.

“Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.” — Lou Reed.

To us, the Hundred Acre Wood as created by A.A. Milne, is in our address book of mythical places, like Narnia, or the Shire, for instance.

Yet, we all have our own Hundred Acre Wood. It is peopled by names from childhood and sun-dappled youth, names which took root in our consciousness at what, from this distance, looks like a very blessed time and so can never age nor wither. A friend request popped up a month ago on my phone screen and because it seemed too good to be true I had to check who our mutual friends were — there was only one — to make sure it was the right person. I had tried searching in the past, but never found what I was looking for.

It’s true that some of us carry the Hundred Acre Wood around with us, it even has virtual properties, but when virtual cuts the real world and become a voice, a face, a life lived in parallel, then, how wonderful life is, now you’re in my world.

It’s been quite a ride getting published in Freshly Pressed. I realize there’s a lovely group of editors and writers in the WordPress community who work hard sifting, shortlisting, and using their well-honed “built-in, shockproof, bullshit detectors” (Hemingway) to curate an interesting site that looks constantly freshly-pressed. Warm thanks.

Appreciate all of you fellow readers, writers and bloggers who read my little rant about the little app that seems to have taken over many of our news feeds on Facebook, liked and reblogged the post (to show solidarity) and also to those who shared their thoughts. To my new readers who’ve subscribed to featherglass, I only hope I don’t disappoint.

It’s interesting how it was only after the post that I was clued in on people who used the comic app to the best of their ability, with smart, witty, and sometimes irreverent words; it’s like the Bitstrips I never knew. So thanks for the links, those who left comments, and keep at it, you creative folks.

I did not highlight what I thought worthwhile about the app since the post was supposed to help me chill (as I’ve been advised to by the odd reader or so). The app’s greeting card templates, for example, are cuter than an e-card, because all that time spent customizing a card shows someone you care.

I’m going to Cambodia for the rest of the week, and will see you when I get back.

Now you can star in your very own comic universe. A flattened, undynamic, featureless, template-driven you.

How charming, the idea of turning yourself into a comic version of yourself. How effortless to plonk yourself into a two-dimensional world of flat colour where you can live out your fantasies.

“Instant comics and cards starring YOU and your friends (capitals mine).” That’s what greets you when you open the Bitstrip app. In this case, the word that trumps ‘instant’ is the word ‘you.’ In fact, the one thing this app does well is pander to your need to be the star of your own TV show. But since that’s way too expensive and Youtube isn’t for everyone who doesn’t emanate Ryan-Higa-like energy, a comic is the next best thing.

Bitstrip lets you be the central figure in your own private universe, which if we let it, becomes the very bastion of petty narcissism. No wait, that’s Instagram. Bitstrips is the nadir of self-absorption sunk to unknown depths with every frame into which you lock yourself.

Here’s why not to bitstrip. Because:

1. The 2D version of you flattens all your 3D features, and that includes your nose.

2. There are enough apps out there that already pander to a latent need for self-aggrandizement, even if it means uglifying yourself through a do-it-yourself generic comic template.

3. The self-validation this self-gratifying comic app gives is the kind that seems eternal (your avatar is forever unless you remove it) but is, in actual fact, fleeting and temporary. You might find yourself periodically tweaking your avatar, hence the option to ‘update your look.’ How ironic, as the choices in the template are in dead colours and stereotypical flesh tones along racial lines. I’m Asian, but why would I choose the yellowish skin tone option? I’ve always wondered what it’s like to have Caucasian coloring. Here goes! Click.

How ironic that my real-life physique is way more flattering, and my eyes, even when listless, have a sparkle that the Bitstrips graphics department were too lazy to animate with code.

4. Bitstrips lets your imagination take a rest by creating tens of “status comics”, greeting cards, and comic strips for you. All you have to do is insert yourself and a friend. Friend is avatar-less? No problem. With time saved from thinking creatively, you ‘create’ an avatar for your friend through a series of multiple-choice features, body parts, and the ugliest clothes ever illustrated.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, / And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look / Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep. — Yeats.

Looking for some old pictures for an upcoming project, I found a handmade book given to me by a friend from my days in the newsroom. He was a soft-spoken history major who loved classical music and everything to do with the performing arts; he ended up editing an arts magazine for The Esplanade where I did some freelance work, and then he moved on to manage The Arts House, a grandiose little building known as Parliament House which was built in the mid-1820s in colonial Singapore.

Back to the book. He’d collated five sheets of thick art paper in light grey, cream, black, white, and blue. He’d folded them down the middle to make a booklet, and with a black-ink pen, written neat lower-case words of verse and prose, one sentiment per page, with lots of empty space all around. Some lines were from famous poets like Yeats, Auden, and a Singapore poet called Lee Tzu Peng. Some of the words were his own.

Alongside the words were photocopied pictures of idyllic fishing scenes: Two male silhouettes sitting in a sampan, a traditional Asian fishing boat, or the dark shape of a male figure knee-deep in water, hauling in a net, or a wide shot of a fishing village on stilts floating above a river bank, the shapes of coconut trees black against the white sky of the xeroxed picture.

But its the words that stood out. Like these:

. . . there is written
a certainty that points us, surely,
to the gateways leading forth
to our first loves. ~ Lee Tzu Peng ~

and

...a past that no one now can share,
no matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
unvariably lovely there,
smaller and clearer as the years go by . . . -- Philip Larkin

But the lines I liked the best, 20 years on, are the ones he himself wrote. Like these:

At the time, I admired the words, succinct and each counting for something; while blithely ignoring the sentiments that weighed them down. I’ve always been slow on the uptake, and now, I get it. Experience is now on my side and the full worth of a friend’s sentiments have presented themselves to me, anew.

For a long time now, our paths have rarely crossed, and we rarely speak except once or twice a year. Is it bad or good? Perhaps neither. The Indian Nobel Prize poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.”

This line was in the handmade book too.

]]>https://featherglass.com/2013/10/22/sentimental-lines/feed/0MingWhen you are old and grey and full of sleep, / And nodding by the fire / take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once. . . -- Yeats.How To Look Younger While Actually Ageinghttps://featherglass.com/2013/10/05/how-to-look-younger-while-actually-ageing/
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What goes into the fountain of youth?

Yesterday afternoon, over coffee with a running mate (no, I’m not running for any office), I told him my exact age. I should have prepared him, but he was shocked. He himself is a little younger, but still, he was shocked. This shock is precisely what women of a certain age like to generate. I laughed gaily at his surprise.

A year or two ago, I would never have revealed such a thing. Some say it’s gauche, not a classy thing for a woman of a certain age to do. And if I’ve disappointed you, sorry.

I attribute it, I said, to my recent interest in running. It’s more than that, he said. It has more to do with an attitude towards life and people, a certain ‘vitality.’

Now that’s an interesting word, for vitality and I go together like pie in the sky.

Vitality is vigour, an energetic style. Andre would snort if I was described to him as energetic. In Wordnik.com, vitality is linked with other sporty words like freshness, animation, originality, inspiration, and get this, sweetness.

This is how you can appear to be rejuvenated and full of vitality:

1. Always carry a bag of jokes around with you. Laughter is not just good medicine, it’s also one key ingredient in the elixir of youth.

2. Take pictures with men and women older than yourself and (if you’re the type) post these online.

3. Hang around people mostly younger than you and explore their worlds with them.

5. Engage in a sport and if possible, be crazy about it, even if it’s only for a season. Achieving personal bests can give you a more positive outlook and if you’re lucky, you might even emanate a positive vibe which others pick up when they hang around you. (Not me.)

6. Do something new often.

7. Realize you can learn from anybody.

8. Learn to be true to yourself, even if it means putting up artwork in your home which you like very very much but are not sure others will. So? It’s your wall. Please yourself.

Vitality, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. The list is incomplete, partly because I don’t know what it is others see that is vital in me. So, please, leave a comment!

And share more tips on how to stay young!

]]>https://featherglass.com/2013/10/05/how-to-look-younger-while-actually-ageing/feed/2MingWhat goes into the fountain of youth? In the Momenthttps://featherglass.com/2013/07/20/in-the-moment/
https://featherglass.com/2013/07/20/in-the-moment/#commentsSat, 20 Jul 2013 06:06:50 +0000http://mingblue.wordpress.com/?p=8662Read More ›]]>I found this draft of what I call a ‘mood piece’ written more than a year ago; words attempting the capture of an instant, words more about emotion and sentiment than about having anything important to say.

My gait is unsteady on the terracotta tiles as I walk, dripping, towards the open shower next to the baby pool. Unsteady because I’d climbed out of the water affer 12 laps in sets of 4, each set done in about 6 mins.

The sunlight was gently shining at nine o’clock and the air was tranquil and kind. I pressed the knob. A burst of water came forth in a warm embrace.

Standing there bathed in warmth, I turned and looked at my friends a stone’s throw away, milling by the edge of the Olympic-sized pool.

Flashes of dragonfly summers and of youth gone by, carefree days of physical agility and neverending energy and sunlight filled my mind’s eyes. For one scintillating moment, I found myself solidly and simply and fleetingly in the present.

Why wasn’t the ‘publish’ button ever hit? I thought the description of the moment too trivial, a trite attempt at sentimentalizing something as ordinary as pool training.

Obviously, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve realized such moments, ordinary as they appear, don’t come round as often as I think they do.

These are the small and lovely things. These are the sedimentary layers of memory, forming the shape of friendships deep below the surface of life.

In Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, we enter the mind of a precocious 12-year-old French girl through entries in her journal, and this excerpt describes her experience sitting on the benches of the school gym at the performance of her school choir.

The scene is set thus:

So yesterday, off I headed to the gymnasium at a trot, led by Madame Fine . . . ‘Led by’ is saying a lot: she did what she could to keep up the pace, wheezing like an old whale. Eventually we got to the gym, everybody found a place as best they could. I was forced to listen to the most asinine conversations coming at me from below, behind, on every side, all around (in the tiered seats), and in stereo (mobile, fashion, mobile, who’s going out with whom, mobile, rubbish teachers, mobile, Cannelle’s party) and then finally the choir arrived to thunderous applause . . . silence fell and the performance began.

And then, the pièce de résistance.

Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck — it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed . . . I see human beings, surrendering into music.

Every time, it’s the same thing. I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes I come close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing . . . I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir performance.

It’s marvellous because we feel her sentiment and so it feels true, and you think you could have written something like that yourself.

In answer to the Weekly Writing Challenge this week, I’m pulling my archive drawers open and riffling through old posts for “a bloated, nasty, air-filled paragraph.” Then, I’m to “edit it until it cries for mercy.”

I’ve chosen several lines from my introductory post on featherglass for butch— I mean, editing. The post is about how my blog’s original title, Don’t Dream It’s Over, borrowed from a song well-loved in college.

Here goes.

Before this round of editing

So what do reminisces about college and a 21st century blog have in common besides the name of a song? Maybe it’s a deepseated longing for a more carefree time, when things were less complicated, and one could imagine being curled up in a corner of a wood-panelled room, bathed in non-destructive sunlight, asleep.

It’s a reminder to me, today, when our speedy lives take precedence over the simple and uncomplicated, that there is a space I can retreat to, where I can be ignore the urgent pounding on the door.

Where I can pretend I am today what I was in a not-t00-distant past: Dreamy-eyed, in no rush to build an empire (no matter how small), or strategise a career path, or hide behind masks.

Of knowing, without a doubt, that between old friends nothing is over, that there is something there that cannot be affected by change, no matter how far, or how few the conversations are in between the silences.

Ephemeral threads of dialogue that can be easily resumed as if no time has passed and everything is as it were since the last time. Of implicit trust and belief in who that person really is, the part that, no matter what transient life brings, remains changeless.

It is in the heart that these things stay.

After editing

So what do memories of college days and a 21st-century blog have in common besides the name of a pop song? Maybe it’s a yearning for a more carefree time, when one could think of curling up in a corner of a wood-panelled room, bathed in non-destructive sunlight, asleep. It’s a reminder that there is a space I can retreat to, where I can ignore the urgent pounding on the door. Where I can pretend to have stubbornly remained dreamy-eyed, in no rush to strategise the trajectory of a career, or hide behind masks.

Of remembering that very old friendships start from very small beginnings. Ephemeral threads of dialogue that are picked up as if no time has passed and everything is as it were since the last time. Of implicit trust and belief in who that person really is, and no matter what transient life brings, remains to us changeless.

This is both a sad and happy state of the heart.

]]>https://featherglass.com/2013/06/18/the-papa-hemingway-writing-challenge/feed/2MingGilding the lily. No Reservations Requiredhttps://featherglass.com/2013/04/24/no-reservations-required/
https://featherglass.com/2013/04/24/no-reservations-required/#respondWed, 24 Apr 2013 02:32:33 +0000http://featherglass.com/?p=8566Read More ›]]>Put simply, to reserve is to keep, hold back, or withdraw, something which is meant for future use.

If someone is ‘reserved’ it is inferred that the person is withdrawn, does not offer information about himself freely. He holds back. In this age of (mis)Information, I’m inclined to think that being reserved is an advantage, that not volunteering too much errs well on the side of discretion.

What about its opposite idea: No reservations?

If to reserve is to hold back, to not reserve is to not hold back, or to not save even. A popular restaurant where no reservations are required means anyone can have first dibs on getting a table at dinner on a Saturday, especially if you plan ahead.

Applied to people, the meaning gets more interesting. Someone who has no reservations about discussing his opinion about Max’s behavior on Saturday night means you will likely get a full airing of what he really thinks about what Max did, and what can be done to curb Max’s mad inclinations in the future.

Or if you are fully convinced in your mind about doing something, you do it with no reservation of will, and do it with complete conviction, confidence, and even enthusiasm. For instance, I have no reservations about how I put together my wardrobe these days. Once, I went to brunch with someone I wanted to impress. The skirt was an Impressionist’s palette of bright florals, which I teamed with a favourite zebra-print shoulder bag. Only the solid black wool top provided relief and rest for the eyes.

Ok, that was fun to write. So what happens when a group of likeminded people get together and plan for world domination?

Obviously I’m joking about that bit. But I’ve always wanted to use it and it was fun saying it.

But in the minute that lapsed between that sentence and this, I am thinking, maybe, it might just be possible that, maybe, I wasn’t joking.

When friends get together and do things together, and do things together for other friends, there’s a boldness of action, a stirring of initiative, to indulge in actions that without a concerted energy, might require more effort on one’s own. I might never do it. But with you in the picture, I can.

It can be as madcap as shamelessly appointing oneself the best man to someone in the group getting married, and the others booking plane tickets or bus tickets for the hour’s flight or five-hour bus ride to a small town on the east coast of West Malaysia to attend that friend’s wedding dinner.

It could also be shamelessly playing the role of the best man to the groom in a civil ceremony in which a best man is not required. (In this nonexistent role, a good best man makes sure the out-of-town fiancée whom he has yet to meet carries a hand bouquet. For the photographs.) Thus, it could be finding oneself snipping the thorns off red roses in the backseat of one’s car to create a hand bouquet the groom can later present to his fiancée whom we have never met.

I found myself yesterday in the company of people who set aside valuable time for other people who matter to them, who have decided that these other people matter to them. There was jollity, camaraderie, completeness. And who knows whether or not these little things we do will steal the hearts of those we like, of those we think of as friends for life?

If you visit featherglass often, you would know that personal photos are seldom posted because the intention is for mass readership (haha) and not a personal snapshot album. And while the writing is personal, I draw the line at making this space too personal. Leave a comment if you think otherwise.

Rules were made to be broken.

People heaven-sent and hell-bent on making an impact on their world, one person at a time. (Gosh, I was thinner then.)

]]>https://featherglass.com/2013/04/24/no-reservations-required/feed/0MingPeople heaven-sent and hell-bent on making an impact in their world, one person at a time. On Surrender (Easter 2013)https://featherglass.com/2013/03/31/on-surrender-easter-2013/
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I’ve always been involved in church Easter productions. It has run the gamut from being part of backstage operations dressing the cast in their costumes or lighting the stage, or being part of the worship band, or arranging the Sunday decor.

This time it’s quiet. I haven’t been appointed, or rostered, or asked to help or stand-in in any way. I will show up in church like it’s just another Sunday, no early rush, no prep, no anxiety.

Easter can never be just another Sunday. I embarked on a journey which started on Ash Wednesday some 40 days ago (you can read about it here) and today I get off the Lenten train.

What Lenten lessons did I learn?

True surrender, if we’re serious and honest about what we want to turn over to God, hurts. Being serious about what we want to give up (be it in the head or heart or hand) takes determination. The severity of determination required will reveal how addicted one is to this thing to be surrendered. Surrendering becomes an act of will that is literally minute-by-minute, if we determine to emerge clean and most importantly, free.

Surrendering hurts. Amidst the hurting, amidst the wrestling that goes on between the whispering angel and the little devil at your ear, there God is. In worship He resides. So always, always, always listen to that still, small voice you hear in your head. The one you keep doubting is real. Trust me, it’s real. It’s the voice of truth.

God knows when you’re hurting and when one resolves to find solace in personal worship, to not get lured off the sacrificial altar into the arms of habit, God is there.

Everything is going to be ok, He has said to me on more than one occasion. God spoke on the phone to me via the voice of a friend, through accidental collisions with people significant in my life, and through the presence of trusted people who care.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. — Erma Bombeck, American humorist and author

The sadness can drift in like a fog from an inner sea of melancholia, and it doesn’t leave, whether I’m alone or alone in a crowd. If I am not alone, but sitting on an old blue leather sofa in somebody’s living room, and an uncle, whose mind at 70 is sharp as a razor, who’s sitting on a matching loveseat at my right, cracks a joke, I laugh.

I forget about the fog and let out a burst of sound, my face is a mirror of the Cheshire grin on the face of the uncle, and for a moment, I am in that moment.

Because I can laugh, like everyone.

It is a terrible thing not to be able to laugh. And not everyone can.

They want to, but they can’t. Something in them stops them from ever going near the edge, something never allows them to fall over into the abyss where laughter resides.

Whenever I catch myself laughing, making the noise that sounds like a foghorn over the sea of silence, I know everything’s ok.

On the other hand, an asteroid is a star-shaped baby planet. Asteroids (from the Greek ἀστεροειδής asteroeidēs meaning star-like) have orbits, circling around the sun much like Earth does. [Though once an asteroid falls from the constellations, its appellation changes to meteor, and finally, on hitting earth, to meteorite.

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the milky way
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?

Coincidences come in ones, sometimes in pairs, sometimes, if you’re lucky, in threes. It takes a certain kind of perspective to see things that way; not every coincidence is welcome, some can be downright awkward. It takes a mind with a moving orbit to see such things as perhaps divinely appointed.

And always, it appears there’s a song for everything.

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https://featherglass.com/2013/02/16/a-coincidence-of-cosmic-proportions/feed/0MingPart of an art installation by Hilton McConnico for the Hermès The Gift of Time exhibit, Singapore 2012. Ash Wednesdayhttps://featherglass.com/2013/02/13/ash-wednesday/
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Facebook: The eternal cocktail party.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the reflective season that precedes Easter. Ash Wednesday is the first of 40 days of prayer and fasting and for some of us, going without something we indulge in, by comparison a very small act of renunciation to remind ourselves of the great sacrifice Christ made for us.

There’s the usual interest in my previous posts about giving up Facebook for Lent. It’s a good execise in discipline, if you’re honest about the reasons why you spend too much time at this cocktail party of social platforms. That’s what the medium looks to me anyway, no matter how many hard news feeds you subscribe too (New York Times, Slate, The Atlantic, the BBC) the food, the funny, and the fashion of the times (not just clothes, darling) all get in the way.

Of what? Having a good time? I’ve been a party girl, I throw parties every so often, and the thing is, real parties are the real deal.

There’s an insane level of flattery that goes on in Facebook, it’s a 24-7 multi-chat line, and the flattery never goes to bed, it never stops as long as you keep posting. There’s a difference between compliments and flattery, and Facebook and flattery go together like jeans and a white tee shirt.

Stop posting and you get a silence in return, which for some, can be too much to bear. I’ve heard many reasons for posting, all valid, all better than my own. The only thing I know about me and the platform is this, that after I post, I have this inexplicable need to check for responses. It’s worse than eating chocolate. Or lately, pineapple tarts.